‪‬Two men and 15 year-old boy face charges of theft of up to £40m of Chinese art from Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England

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‪‬Thaddaeus Ropac to open new 4700 sq meter space in Paris in October 2012, the former boiler works factory to be designed by Buttazoni & Associés with moveable walls, the debut show featuring Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys

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‪‬Tracey Emin draws “strong and sexy and strident” rendering of the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, based on both meeting the queen and outside research and earlier images, to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee for Financial Times

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Los Carpinteros, Cuarteto Rebelde (2012). All images courtesy of Kunstmuseum Thum.

Los Carpinteros, the Cuban artist duo, are currently showing Silence Your Eyes at the Kunstmuseum Thun as their first show in Switzerland. The pair consists of Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez, and formerly had a third member, Alexandre Arrechea. They studied at the Art Academy in Havana, earning their name (carpenters) by creating large wooden sculptures from the readily available material. Many of their works employ architectural and design oriented themes, such as urban buildings and furniture, which are then shown in an exaggerated manner. Such themes are used to highlight the overlap between the private and the public and political realms. The inventiveness of the works belies their engagement with “politically charged” topics.

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‪‬As Chuck Close and others’ sought royalties from secondary sales of artwork, the California Resale Royalties Act has been ruled unconstitutional by Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, “the court finds that the (law) has the ‘practical effect’ of controlling commerce ‘occurring wholly outside the boundaries’ of California even though it may have some ‘effects within the state.”

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‪‬Documenta 13 artist list announced: beginning June 9, 2012, the 100 day, once-every-five-years event will feature over 150 artists from 55 countries

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Charles Ray, installation view. All images courtesy of Matthew Marks

New works by Charles Ray are currently on view at Matthew Marks Los Angeles through June 23. Two stainless steel figures inhabit the gallery space; Sleeping Woman is perched on a bench with her head resting on a blanket while across the gallery Young Man stands nude, his body aligned with the sleeping woman. Ray asserts a calculated tension of space with nuanced attention to perception that has been the essence of his sculptural practice for decades.

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‪‬New York Times discusses in detail the pros and cons of the new Barnes Museum which has controversially relocated to downtown Philadelphia

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‪‬Tate Britain reaches fundraising goal of £45 million for various refurbishments to the building, including a “semi-permanent display” of historical British art featuring work by William Blake, David Hockney, and LS Lowry

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‪‬Financial Times sheds light on the high risk—and premiums—of art insurance as art market prices continue to increase more than ever, with the traditional free ports of Switzerland now facing changes to customs laws which will require artwork information and value to be declared

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‪‬Dustin Yellin discusses his new 24,000 sq ft warehouse turned ‘creative utopia’ in Red Hook with Interview Magazine, “That is the house ethos: to cross-pollinate all these different disciplines in one place”

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‪‬South African ANC party may take Goodman Gallery to court in Johannesburg to remove artist Brett Murray‘s depiction of President Jacob Zuma, which debatably features Zuma exposing his genitals

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‪‬Gwyneth Paltrow to possibly play Pablo Picasso‘s lover Dora Maar in upcoming film, “Guernica 33 Days,” the €8 million Spanish film includes Antonio Banderas as Picasso and is scheduled for a May, 2013 release

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‪‬KAWS tapped to create balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, planning a 40 ft long version of his Companion character, and joining the ranks of Tom Otterness, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Tim Burton, who have also participated in the ‘Blue Sky Gallery’ series

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Tom Sachs and Kanye West at the opening of SPACE PROGRAM: MARS. All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.

Tom Sachs takes New York City to Mars in his new immersive installation at the Park Avenue Armory, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS, co-presented by Creative Time and the Armory. For four weeks, the artist and a crew of thirteen will enact various missions and rituals as if on Mars, albeit a world of faux space suits, space ships, and craters, constructed of plywood, found junk, and several trips to the hardware store. At Tuesday night’s opening preview, guests sipped ‘Astronaut Sunrise with Mars Salt Rim’ and ‘Vader Piss,’ including the likes of Kanye West, Julian Schnabel, Nate Lowman, and Hanna Liden, with Bill Powers manning the Indoctrination station. According to the press release, Sach’s work “provokes reflection on the haves and have-nots, utopian follies and dystopian realities, while asking barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation.” One visitor remarked, “I wanted sand, red sand everywhere… but other than that, it’s great!”

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‪‬Rembrandt‘s ‘Portrait of the Artist’ on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through this Sunday, having traveled outside of Europe for the first time ever while the work’s London home Kenwood House undergoes renovations

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‪‬New York Botanical Garden to open new exhibition “Monet’s Garden” this Saturday, modeled after the artist’s Giverny estate by Tony Award-winning scenic designer Scott Pask

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‪‬Tracey Emin designs London Tube map to print 18 million editions, available in June through the 2012 Olympics, the 16th in a series by Art on the Underground initiative

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Do-Ho Suh, Reflection (2005–2011). Images via Leeum Samsung Museum of Art.

Korean-born multi-media artist Do-Ho Suh exhibits Home Within Home at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea through June 3. The show assembles sculptural works produced over the last seven year years, which recreate interior and exterior spaces in fragile unions between skeletal metal armatures and diaphonous silk and polyester fabrics. Through his magnificent and acutely embellished domestic shells, Suh delivers fragile and impermanent representations that toy with our understanding of the home as physically and ideologically sacred and safe.

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‪‬The Guggenheim Museum announces mid-career retrospective of Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra to open June 29–October 28, 2012. The exhibition spans 20 years of work, featuring over 70 color photographs and five video installations, and is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, which displayed the show in February, 2012

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‪‬Mike Kelley‘s Artangel project, ‘Mobile Homestead’ to be screened at the Whitney Museum May 16–20. The video portion consists of three different hour-long videos documenting the replica of his childhood home traveling through Detroit

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Rita Ackermann, Fire By Days (2010–2012), installation view. All images via The Journal Gallery.

Since December of 2010, Hungarian painter Rita Ackermann has focused her work on a single subject, a solitary face in profile, explored through various permutations of red and blue. Now, five new works from her Fire By Days series can be seen on view at The Journal Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Continually retreading the same territory, the Fire By Days series has received some harsh criticism, winked at by the artist and gallery by reprinting a harsh critique of some of her works from the website Hyperallergic in the show’s Press Release. Using only two primary colors, Ackermann stretches the limitations she imposes on her own work, exploring variations of texture, background, negative space, and shading to illustrate a consistently re-evaluative process at work in the creation of these paintings.

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‪‬Video: ‘A Brief History of John Baldessari‘ commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” and narrated by Tom Waits spans the artist’s entire oeuvre, as well as his daily life in the studio, including his internet password and dog, Giotto

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‪‬Rob Pruitt‘s life-size sculpture of Andy Warhol to remain at Union Square through the summer, the installment’s second extension due to popular demand

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